


The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith

by Marcus_S_Lazarus



Series: The Twilight Storm [10]
Category: Doctor Who, Sarah Jane Adventures, Twilight Series - All Media Types
Genre: Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:28:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23547664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marcus_S_Lazarus/pseuds/Marcus_S_Lazarus
Summary: The Doctor and Bella investigate a threat to one of the Doctor’s oldest and dearest friends.
Relationships: Tenth Doctor & Bella Swan, Tenth Doctor & Sarah Jane Smith
Series: The Twilight Storm [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1694503
Kudos: 3





	1. Crashed the Wedding

As I casually floated in the TARDIS pool, I was amazed that it had taken me so long to try this place out. I'd always been slightly uncomfortable swimming back home- I knew how, of course, I just always felt inadequate in a swimsuit in public-, but with the Doctor not regularly using the pool I felt more comfortable just relaxing in it.

After all the time I'd spent running around for the last few months, with at least half of my time outside the TARDIS focused on running for my life or some variation of that activity- I enjoyed my time with the Doctor but it wasn't always as relaxing as it could be-, it was good to have the opportunity to sit back and drift for a moment. With the water maintaining a comfortable temperature, along with some function of the pool allowing me to actually program it to allow me to float, I was taking the opportunity to catch up on my reading, perusing a few time-travel novels I'd found in the library out of curiosity.

The subject matter wasn't my usual choice, but considering what we'd recently dealt with I thought it only appropriate to get a better feel for what people believed were the 'rules' of time travel so that I'd have a better understanding of what we were talking about when I spoke to the Doctor later. Considering how panicked the Doctor was about the idea of changing history, I was fairly sure that time travellers didn't automatically create new timelines whenever they got involved in the past- from some stories the Doctor told me, it sounded like at least half the time he went anywhere his actions ended up being part of history rather than changing it-, but he had mentioned that there was still a risk of altering the original timeline, even if he'd been unclear if he preferred to avoid that for practical reasons of endangering history, moral reasons of not wanting to risk things becoming worse, or a combination of the two…

One of the more interesting examples the Doctor had cited was actually Hitler; I'd never really thought about politics before joining the Doctor, but after he explained the dangerous structure of the Nazi party it was actually rather interesting to consider how things might have gone if Hitler had died before the war began on an intellectual level. Would the Nazis have fallen apart without Hitler to keep them together, would someone else have taken over in his name, would the new leader have been sane enough to keep them together while lacking Hitler's ability to inspire...?

It was like the Doctor had told me during our encounter with the Daleks; changing history couldn't be done because it made things too complicated, regardless of your original intentions.

It was sad, but in a strange way, it helped me appreciate the opportunities I'd discovered when I accepted the Doctor's invitation to travel with him all the more; for all the occasions when we couldn't do something, that just made the occasions when we could make a difference all the more important…

My thoughts were cut short when the TARDIS suddenly shook, knocking me out of my earlier floating position and nearly sending me into the side of the pool before I regained my balance. Quickly hauling myself out of the pool, I shrugged on a loose white shirt and a blue sarong that I'd draped over a deck-chair when I'd come to the pool- I'd been uncomfortable walking around the TARDIS in just a swimming costume- before hurrying from the swimming pool to the console room, where the Doctor was anxiously examining the console.

"What's wrong?" I asked, looking at him anxiously.

"I'm detecting a build-up of potential temporal disruptions in the vicinity of Earth," the Doctor said, looking at the readings on the TARDIS monitor in confusion. "It's as though… something's… _stopping_ me from materialising…"

"Something's trying to keep you away from Earth?" I said, looking at the Doctor in surprise. "Why would- I mean, who could do that?"

It wasn't exactly hard to work out why someone would want to keep the TARDIS away from Earth, given the Doctor's constantly-expressed interest in protecting it, but working out who could do that was harder…

"No idea, but I _think_ I can get around it," the Doctor said, looking thoughtfully at the screen before him as he began to work grimly at the controls. "No matter how powerful this is, they can't maintain something like this forever; just need to find a point that the barrier isn't blocking, materialise there, and then take a short temporal hop backwards…"

"Isn't that dangerous?" I asked, trying to remember whatever I'd read about time travel and what the Doctor had told me. "I mean, if we're going to a point after it happened-"

"It's only an issue if we _see_ what happens; so long as we don't know what took place to block it, we can do whatever we want and assume that it stopped because we did what we did…" the Doctor explained, still hurrying around the console to adjust relevant controls, before he hit a final large lever and grinned in relief as the sound of materialisation filled the room. My initial smile of hope faltered as the Doctor's expression shifted while the wheezing continued, as though the TARDIS's attempts to dematerialise were being constantly drawn out, but the ship finally fell silent.

"Had to adjust the destination once or twice, but we're almost there now," the Doctor said, looking at me with a slight smile before he dashed around the console to head for the door. "Come along, Swan!"

As we emerged from the TARDIS, I was surprised to find us standing in what appeared to be a hotel lobby, a large set of stairs on our right and a large door on the left leading outside.

A noticeboard in front of us revealed that the main conference hall was set up for the marriage of a Peter Dalton to a-

"Sarah Jane Smith?" the Doctor said, looking at the words on the board before us in shock just as I was processing the words.

"You know her?" I asked, looking curiously at the Doctor; now that he mentioned it, the name _did_ seem familiar from some of his stories…

"Old friend of mine," the Doctor said briefly, before his eyes narrowed grimly. "And I don't recall anything in her future history about marriage, and someone was going to _great_ lengths to stop us getting here, which means…"

I didn't have the chance to ask the Doctor what he was talking about before he virtually tore the door open and ran into the hall, revealing a group of people dressed in fine clothes sitting around the room, chairs laid out in rows of three on either side. A couple in what looked like their fifties were standing at the other end of the room in a black suit and a white dress respectively, the man possessing a strong nose and greying brown hair while the woman had thick brown hair and vivid blue eyes.

"STOP THIS WEDDING NOW!" the Doctor yelled, looking urgently at the group of people sitting before us, his gaze fixed on the older woman who was most likely the Sarah Jane Smith he'd mentioned earlier.

"Uh… we're not related to her!" I said, feeling stupid as soon as I'd said it; we were dealing with something powerful enough to stop the TARDIS going somewhere, and I was worried that a bunch of strangers would think the Doctor was an older woman's boytoy and I was their illegitimate daughter?

God, Emmett would be laughing his head off at that if he was here…

The muttered confusion of the other wedding guests drew my attention back to more immediate matters as the bride and the various guests looked at my friend in shock, the sudden appearance of what looked for all the world like a robotic dog from under a nearby table only adding to my confusion .

"I said," the Doctor said, his shoulders tense as he glared at the groom, " _stop_ the wedding."

Before anyone could say anything else, the wind started to blow around the room despite the fact that we were currently inside, sending the Doctor actually staggering back even as everyone else in the room just suddenly had hair blowing in their faces.

"Alert, alert!" the robotic dog said, rotating on the spot. "Danger, Mistress!"

"Sarah!" the Doctor yelled, confirming my identification of the woman as he reached out towards the woman. "Get away from him!"

"Peter, no!" the woman said, straining against the man standing beside her; the man was holding on to her wrist, but she evidently hadn't realised it until now.

"Don't be afraid, Sarah Jane," the man said, his expression disturbingly solemn despite what was happening around us. "It's the angel."

_Angel_? I thought in confusion.

What could be happening here that would make anyone believe there was an angel involved…?

At least part of my question was answered when a strange new figure appeared, the size of a man and dressed in a long white robe with an unusually wide hat, but any thoughts that it might have been an angel were dispelled by its disturbingly smooth face, with sunken depths where its eyes should have been and sharp teeth in a lipless mouth.

"The Trickster!" a girl's voice called out from near the front of the hall.

"Mum!" a male voice yelled.

"Sarah!" the Doctor yelled, still flailing against the wind. "Trickster, let her go!"

"Too late, Time Lord!" the entity that was apparently the Trickster said, malevolence in its tone as it pointed at the Doctor before it moved towards the woman that was apparently Sarah Jane, a grin on its face. "You're mine, Sarah Jane; mine forever…"

With those ominous words, the creature made contact with the bride and groom and they both vanished, the Doctor and Sarah yelling each other's names before she disappeared from view while the groom just looked out in satisfaction, the wind dying down at the same time.

"Sarah!" the Doctor yelled, anxiously running to the area where the bride and groom had been standing earlier. "Sarah, no!"

"What happened?" I asked as I hurried up to join him, trying to ignore the confused stares I was receiving in my loose-fitting attire compared to their more formal style of dress.

"I…" the Doctor began, before the room started to shake, further questions cut off as virtually everyone else in the room began to yell in shock. The Doctor and I could only watch as what I could only describe as energy waves washed over the people still sitting in the room before they almost all vanished in a white shimmer, leaving only me, the Doctor, the robotic dog I'd seen earlier, and three teenagers sitting near the front of the room.

"Mum! Dad!" the girl I'd heard yelling earlier called out.

"Hold on, everyone!" the Doctor yelled, diving to the ground and grabbing a table leg, grabbing my arm and pulling me down to do the same. "Hold on!"

As I followed his cue, I only had enough time to notice the other remaining three residents holding on to their chairs before everything around me went white…


	2. Meeting the Bannerman Road Gang

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Probably goes without saying, but since I'll be focusing on the Doctor's impact on events, everything that happened to Sarah and Peter with the Trickster unfolds the way it did originally, so don't expect to see Peter any time soon

"Hello?" the Doctor's voice said, drawing me back to consciousness after whatever had just happened, my eyes blinking open to see my friend sitting over me, looking at me with his familiar warm smile. "There you are."

"Doctor?" I said, sitting up and looking around myself, my eyes quickly falling on the only other people in the room; two boys and one girl, maybe a year or two younger than I was, the boys dressed in suits while the girl was in a pink dress that struck me as slightly too vivid in colour. "What… what happened?"

"Long story, and I'd prefer to explain it later; give me a moment…" the Doctor said, hurrying over to crouch over one of the boys, this one with long dark hair and paler skin than the other two. "Hello, Luke? Luke Smith?"

"D-Doctor?" the boy said, opening his eyes and looking at the Doctor in gradual surprise.

"That's me!" the Doctor replied, his voice soft and reassuring. "Good to meet you in the flesh."

"W-what happened?" the boy who was apparently Luke Smith said, sitting up and looking urgently at my friend. "Mum and the Trickster-!"

"Luke Luke Luke, listen!" the Doctor said, placing his hands reassuringly on Luke's shoulders as he crouched in front of him. "Everything's going to be all right. I can find Sarah, I can bring her back. I promise. But I need you to be strong for me, just like you were before. I know you can do it!"

With that said, the Doctor helped the boy to his feet, before the other male figure present sat up, looking sceptically at my friend.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"Hello, Clyde!" the Doctor said, grinning as he helped the boy in question to his feet before doing the same for the girl. "And that would be Rani!"

"What?" Clyde asked, looking at the Doctor in confusion. "How do you know my name?"

"Uh… he knows Sarah?" I said, suddenly feeling uncomfortable as the other three turned to look at me while the Doctor ran back to the place where that thing had appeared to take the bride and groom, crouching down to examine the floor. "Well, I'm pretty sure he does; we all came here so quickly he didn't really explain it all to me…"

"Wait a minute…" the girl who was apparently called Rani said, looking at the Doctor with a sudden sense of hope about her expression. "You must be… it's you, isn't it?"

"That's me," the Doctor said, standing up from the floor.

"The Doctor!" Rani said.

"You know him?" I asked in surprise.

"Mum told us all about him, but…" Luke said, shaking his head as he looked at the Doctor with a broadening grin. "I mean, _wow_ …"

"I hope you're as good as she says you are," Clyde said, as the Doctor ran past him to crouch down the floor at the place where he'd been standing earlier.

"Weeeelll, you know journalists. Always exaggerating," the Doctor said, standing up and turning around to take in the room. "But, yeah; as Bella will confirm, I'm still pretty amazing on a good day!"

"Master," a robotic voice said, drawing my attention to the previously-noticed robotic dog as it rolled out from under the table. "Inquiry; where is Mistress Sarah Jane?"

"K9!" the Doctor said, grinning as he walked over to the dog. "Did you miss me? Did you miss me, eh?"

"Repeat," the dog said, ignoring the Doctor's grin. "Whereabouts of Sarah Jane: where is she?"

"Weeeelllll…" the Doctor began.

"And who are you?" Rani asked, looking at me in a pointed manner.

"Uh… Bella Swan; I travel with him now," I said, smiling slightly at Rani as I held out my right hand while indicating the Doctor with the left, awkwardly smiling at her as she ignored my offered hand to stare at my current attire. "Sorry about this; I was in the pool when things went a bit odd and didn't have time to get anything else…"

"Right…" Clyde said, looking at me with a slight grin before his attention shifted to the window behind me and his eyes widened in shock. "Where are we?"

Turning around, it didn't take long to see what he meant; the room still seemed normal, but the outside world that I'd briefly glimpsed when we arrived here had been replaced by a white, featureless void, like nothing I'd ever seen before, stretching out as far as the eye could see, without even the slightest trace of any solid objects around us.

"We're in a dimensional shift," the Doctor began to explain, walking up behind us; I only realised that the other three children had gathered around me when I turned to look at my friend. "Time's moved on, but us, this entire building; we've been left behind."

"There's nothing out there…" Rani said, confirming my thoughts.

"I said all along; I _knew_ there was something wrong about all of this!" Clyde said, before looking at the Doctor. "And what exactly is going on?"

"I'll explain later…" the Doctor said, glancing out of another window, resulting in a sudden commotion from the group around us, all three of them yelling for their voices to be heard, before the Doctor pulled an old football rattle out of his pocket and spun it around, creating a racket that halted the younger three more effectively than my protests ever could.

"Here's the answer to all of your questions," the Doctor said, looking firmly between the other three. "Yes; that was the Trickster. Yes; we're trapped. Yes; I'm the only one who can get us out of the trap. Yes; I'm going to bring Sarah Jane, and your mum and dad, and all the others back here safe, but I can't do any of it without you."

"You… need us?" Clyde said, looking at the Doctor in surprise.

"He always needs us," I said, looking at Clyde with a smile. "Why do you think he has companions?"

"Exactly," the Doctor said, nodding at me with a smile. "Like Bella said, Sarah Jane and I are at our best with back-up."

"But… my mum and dad," Rani said, looking at the Doctor in confusion. "Where are they?"

"Just go along with him, Rani," Luke said reassuringly. "I saw him save the world."

"You helped me save the world, Lukey-boy!" the Doctor said, grinning as he patted Luke's cheek before turning around. "Come on; we can use the TARDIS!"

As the Doctor ran back towards the door we'd entered the room by, the other three grinned and began to run after him, only for the Doctor to suddenly stop and look back at them. "I assume everyone knows what the TARDIS is? Unless you've _really_ not been paying attention…"

The eager grins on their faces were enough to confirm that they did know what the Doctor was talking about, even without the slight nods (Not that I could blame them; if I'd heard even a few stories about the TARDIS before seeing it, I would have been amazed as well).

"Aaaannnddd… _allonys-y_!" the Doctor yelled, hurrying through the doors back into the hotel lobby, only to reveal a distinct lack of TARDIS.

"Oh, no no no no no no!" the Doctor said, skidding to a halt with a horrified expression on his face, voicing my own thoughts on this development before I could. "It was there, it was right there!"

"What-?" I began, trying not to think about the implications of the TARDIS being lost, just before I heard the familiar sound of materialisation, a smile spreading across my face as the TARDIS's familiar blue shape appeared in front of us, only to falter as the TARDIS shimmered around the edges, apparently straining to assume a solid form.

"That noise…" Rani said, looking at the shaky vision of my current home in surprise. "I've heard it before!"

"That was me," the Doctor explained, still staring urgently at the ship, the familiar blue box apparently fighting to take on some kind of solid form. "I was trying to break through, but we got knocked back by the Trickster; took ages to get a lock on the right set of coordinates..."

"Temporal schism is preventing TARDIS materialisation," the robot dog reported behind us.

"Wait a minute; _that's_ the TARDIS?" Clyde said; I wondered how anyone could have heard about the Doctor and not been aware of the TARDIS's exterior appearance, but quickly decided not to worry about it. "It's just a wooden box!"

"A wooden box that's virtually indestructible and bigger on the inside," I pointed out, looking over at Clyde with a firm stare. "Don't insult the ship, Clyde; it's been through a lot…"

My voice trailed off as I looked back at the TARDIS as the materialisation sound began to fade, swiftly leaving me looking at nothing more interesting than the empty hall that had been there before, our ship and our only possible escape still inaccessible.

"OK," the Doctor said, his tone possessing a frenzied grimness about it. "Got no TARDIS; it can't materialise until time moves forward."

"What, so we're trapped here?" Rani asked. "Wherever this is…"

"No!" the Doctor said, looking turning around to look at the four of us with a broad grin (I might have been his companion, but I still felt like I should recognise that I was only human). "'Cause what I have got? Not only have I still got Bella, but I've got K9!"

"Affirmative," the dog in question said (I had no idea how to feel about the Doctor's obvious high regard for me; flattered was obvious, but I couldn't shake the feeling that I didn't deserve it…).

"And we've got you three!" the Doctor continued, wrapping an arm around me as he grinned at the other three. "And any friend of Sarah Jane Smith is a friend of mine!"

"Uh… same here," I said, smiling slightly awkwardly at them.

I didn't exactly know much about Sarah Jane personally, but if she'd worked with the Brigadier and Doctor Sullivan, I could probably take it as read that she was pretty good at her job…

"But… where _is_ this?" Clyde asked. "What's happened to the rest of the world?"

"Our present location: nowhere, nowhen," K9 said.

"Nowhen?" Clyde and I said simultaneously.

"Look at the clocks," the Doctor said, indicating both a nearby digital clock on a counter and a more conventional clock above it. As I looked at it, I soon saw what the Doctor was talking about; the clock seemed to be stuck at 15:23:23, the final 3 on the digital clock occasionally flickering as though it was about to become a 4 before returning to its original appearance while the second hand of the regular clock ticked back and forth in place.

"What?" I said, looking at the clocks in surprise, a glance at a nearby television screen showing horses jumping over a barrier on a similar loop confirming that I wasn't just looking at a mechanical glitch. "Are you saying… time's _stopped_?"

"Not precisely," the Doctor said. "It's more like it's stuck in a loop; twenty-three seconds and twenty-three minutes past three o'clock, and we're caught inside this one second."

"But… hold on," Clyde said, looking uncertainly at the Doctor. "If we're here… where's Sarah Jane?"

"I think she's right here," the Doctor said, looking around the lobby with a thoughtful expression. "Just in a different second…"

Looking over at the other three, I was selfishly glad to see that they seemed to be a bit confused by all of this as well; I might have been travelling with the Doctor for a while, but the idea of facing something powerful enough to do _this_ …


	3. A Meeting for the Ages

"So… we've been 'kept behind' in this second?" Rani asked, looking curiously at the rest of us.

"Affirmative, Mistress Rani," K9 said.

"But the rest of the world," Rani continued, clearly trying to process what had just happened to us, "Mum and Dad and everyone, they've moved on from here, forwards in time… why has the Trickster trapped us here?"

"Hostages," I said grimly, my mind flashing back to my confrontation with James, a few months and a lifetime ago; he might not have _actually_ taken Renee hostage, but the threat had served the same purpose as actually doing it.

"Hostages?" Clyde repeated in surprise.

"Well… Luke's Sarah's son, right?" I said, letting Luke nod at me in confirmation before I continued speaking. "Add in you two, K9- and the Doctor, of course-, and we've probably got everyone Sarah Jane's particularly close to all stuck in one place… and me, of course."

"Don't sell yourself short, Bella-" the Doctor began, looking at me with a pointed stare as he sat up from where he'd been crouched on the floor.

"I just meant that Sarah doesn't _know_ me, Doctor," I pointed out, even as I smiled at my friend's attempt to stop me voicing my apparent low opinion of myself; after the way I'd always been sidelined by the Cullens for my 'protection', it was nice that the Doctor refused to let me see myself as anything but an equal.

"Point," the Doctor said, smiling at me before he turned his attention back to his search, hurrying up the stairs at the opposite end of the hall from the entrance.

"We've met the Trickster before, but we've never found out who he is," Clyde said, looking curiously at the Doctor.

"The Trickster is a creature from beyond the universe," the Doctor explained, as he walked back down the stairs. "Forever trying to break into our reality, manifest himself. He's one of the Pantheon of Discord."

"Beyond the universe?" I repeated, looking at the Doctor apprehensively, suddenly recalling one of the stories he'd once told me. "Does that mean… is he like the original vampires you told me about?"

"Vampires?" Rani said, looking at me in shock. "Sarah Jane never told us anything about _vampires_!"

"Well, I thought they were all extinct when I travelled with her- only learned otherwise a few decades after we parted company from my perspective-, and it never came up when we met later; Bella and I had a… complicated encounter with them a while back," the Doctor said, shrugging apologetically at Rani before he looked at me. "But to answer your question, Bella, it's not the same; the original vampires were manifestations of evil from the darker dimensions, but the Trickster operates on a realm beyond what we understand of reality while still being tied to it, bound by the rules of Order and Chaos that balance the Trickster's master, the Black Guardian, with his counterpart, the White Guardian."

"Oh," I said, trying not to consider the idea that the Doctor was talking about what sounded like _gods_ right now in any more depth than I had to; vampires, werewolves and aliens I could handle, but I wasn't sure I was ready to start thinking about actual _gods_ on top of everything else…

"The Trickster is essentially an exile, who exists to wreak havoc," the Doctor explained, glancing at the other three as he pulled out the sonic screwdriver and continued to scan the room. "You've fought him before, and we can stop him again; I just need you to fill Bella in while I run a scan here…"

"You fought this… Trickster before?" I said, looking curiously at the others as the Doctor hurried up the stairs at the other end of the hall with the screwdriver out in front of him. "What did he do then?"

"Well," Clyde began, "I don't really remember much about the first time, but… basically, he killed Sarah Jane when she was thirteen."

"What?" I said incredulously; I knew from the Doctor that changing history was only inadvisable rather than being impossible, but hearing that someone had done something like that was still a shock. "But, how-?"

"Some kind of puzzle-box Sarah Jane had given another friend of ours- she's moved away since then- protected her from the changes in history, so she was able to tell this friend of Sarah Jane's who'd died originally about what had happened so that her friend could… well, die like she had originally," Clyde explained.

"Oh," I said, nodding thoughtfully as I turned that over in my mind before I spoke again. "You mean… he went back in time and made a deal to save Sarah's friend from this accident, but killed Sarah instead?"

"Basically, yeah," Clyde confirmed.

"The second time he showed up, he manipulated Mum into changing history so that her own parents escaped the accident that killed them," Luke continued, a grim expression on his own face at the memory of the events he was talking about. "She had to tell them the truth so that they'd die in another accident, or the Trickster would have used the change to conquer Earth."

"Oh," I said, trying not to think about the implications of what had happened in the last two confrontations with the Trickster; maybe two encounters didn't set a definitive precedent, but when someone had to die to stop the Trickster's last couple of plans, that didn't encourage the thought that we'd all get out of this one…

"Ha!" the Doctor said, looking up with a broad grin from where he'd been standing by the check-in desk with the sonic screwdriver held up to his ear. "That's it; a time trace! Just a hint of Sarah Jane, oh, she's close!"

"What was that?" Rani asked, rubbing her arms as though she was feeling cold. "Felt like something just walked over my grave!"

"She's here!" the Doctor said, still staring enthusiastically at the screwdriver as he held it out in front of him after hurrying over to the edge of the check-in desk where Rani had been standing. "She's here! Sarah!"

"Sarah Jane," Rani corrected, leaning over to address my friend in a lower voice, even though Luke, Clyde and I could easily hear it. "She doesn't like being called Sarah."

"She does by me," the Doctor said, still staring at the screwdriver in front of him, until I heard what sounded like a faint voice calling to someone…

"Mum!" Luke yelled, confirming that I wasn't hearing things.

"That was her!" Clyde said.

"K9!" the Doctor yelled over at the dog. "Isolate the time trace!"

"Affirmative, Master," K9 said, its ears whirring for a moment before the robot dog spoke again. "Temporal schism divided in two, Master."

"Two?" I said, looking at the Doctor curiously.

"We're in one second, and Sarah's in another; just _slightly_ before ours," the Doctor clarified.

"So… we're in the same place as Mum, but not the same time?" Luke asked.

"Exactly," the Doctor said firmly. "Just a second or two apart, but that's enough for the current purposes…"

He grinned as the sonic began to beep again. "Ooh, she's upstairs! Come on! Luke, K9, watch for the TARDIS; you see it coming back, shout the place down!"

"Orders accepted, Master," K9 said.

"You three, with me!" the Doctor said, indicating Clyde, Rani and me. "Spit-spot!"

He might have had an odd way of phrasing it, but I quickly hurried after the Doctor with the other two, running along the upper balcony towards another door, only to find ourselves running into the wedding room downstairs once again.

"What just happened?" Rani said, looking at our surroundings in confusion; I couldn't see how we could have ended up _downstairs_ so quickly...

"It's a spatio loop mixed with a temporal loop," Clyde said, looking thoughtfully around the room.

"How did you work that one out?" Rani asked.

"Well, we've been doing this for a while now," Clyde said, smiling slightly at her. "I have been taking notes."

"Sounds like a good guess to me," I said, nodding in approval at Clyde as the Doctor continued to scan our surroundings- I might not have been paying close attention to some of the terms the Doctor used when describing the more unusual conditions we found ourselves in, but I'd picked up some things over the last few weeks with him-, before I looked curiously back at the Time Lord. "Talking of notes, there's one thing I still don't understand about this."

"Yes?" the Doctor said, not looking up from where he was tapping the screwdriver in frustration, trying to make it work.

"Well… this 'Trickster' is supposed to be some kind of entity from outside the universe that wants to cause chaos?" I said, glancing over at Clyde and Rani as the two of them nodding uncertainly, confirming my query even if they were clearly also lost about providing an answer to my question. "And… he's going to do this by making one of your old companions get married?"

"Ah, good point; why is he doing this?" the Doctor said, nodding thoughtfully at me before he looked upwards in a contemplative manner. "Because… he's never been to a wedding before? No, that's daft… _AH_! She's here!"

His attention was once again focused on the sonic screwdriver in his hands, studying it carefully as he held it close to his face. "If I can narrow her link ratio…"

" _DOCTOR_!" a voice said from behind us, prompting us all to turn and look at the terrifying form of the Trickster, eyeless and teeth bared, now dressed in a black version of the white robe he'd been wearing earlier.

"Ah," the Doctor said, looking curiously at the new arrival, as nonchalant as ever despite what he'd told us about the power of the entity before us. "You look better in black. Or is white the new black?"

" _At last, Doctor_!" the Trickster said as my friend walked up towards him, the Doctor's expression grim and the Trickster's voice somehow echoing around us (I wasn't sure if 'him' was the correct term for an entity like this, but it sounded male, and it felt more natural than calling the Trickster 'it'). " _I can feel this moment reverberating back to the Dark Ages. The meeting of the Pantheon of Discord and the Last of the Time Lords_."

"I've known the legends of the Pantheon since I was a little boy," the Doctor said, looking thoughtfully at the Trickster with his hands in his pockets. "I fought your shadows and your changelings; I never thought we'd actually meet."

" _And I know the legends of the Doctor_ ," the Trickster said, a slightly admiring tone in his voice that soon changed to display an element of contempt as he continued speaking. " _A man of ice and fire, who walked among gods, who once held the Key to Time in his hands… Now, he is surrounded by_ children."

"They're my friends," the Doctor said firmly, ignoring the contempt in the Trickster's voice as he stared at our enemy, before his expression brightened. "Which reminds me, you look a bit lonely for a Pantheon."

" _I embody multitudes_ ," the Trickster said, which did nothing to answer my own questions about the rest of the Pantheon but didn't exactly bode confidence even before the Trickster continued speaking. " _But who are you, a man who has lost everybody, to talk to me of loneliness?! When the Gate is waiting for you…_ "

"What do you mean?" the Doctor said, his initial confidence faltering at that unusual announcement.

" _Sarah Jane Smith is my prize_ ," the Trickster said, ignoring the Doctor's query. " _Even you Doctor, didn't realise how wonderful she is_."

"What do you want with her?" the Doctor asked, glaring at our enemy.

" _What I've always wanted, from many of those I visit_ ," the Trickster said, with what could almost be a grin if it weren't for his twisted face. " _Her agreement… Goodbye, Doctor_."

With that, the Trickster vanished once more, leaving us looking silently at where he had been standing, processing his words.

"Her agreement…" the Doctor said, looking thoughtfully at the rest of us. "With the power of words… she says 'I do'… YES! That's _it_!"

"That's what?" Clyde asked.

"She promises to love and honour her husband, wedding ring goes on, then she's agreed to it, she's totally under the Trickster's power!" the Doctor explained in his usual frantic tone. "Marital bliss, but she forgets about all this; she starts living a new life…"

"Forgetting about her old one!" Rani said, inspiration striking her at last as she followed the Doctor's train of thought. "Protecting the Earth!"

"And the planet's wide open, so aliens can just barge in?" Clyde said (A part of me couldn't believe that one person could make that much difference, but I stopped myself from voicing my scepticism; if I'd learned anything from my time with the Doctor, it was that _everyone_ was important in their own way).

"Without Sarah, without you lot, saving the world from your attic in Ealing, there'll be chaos and destruction!" the Doctor said. "Meat and drink to the Trickster."

"As if she's going to say yes!" Clyde said sceptically.

"With us as hostages?" I pointed out, looking over at Clyde.

I might not know much about Sarah Jane Smith, but if she was a friend of the Doctor, I felt that I could feel comfortable assuming that would be a problem…

"TARDIS!" the Doctor yelled as the ship's familiar wheezing sound filled the room once again, the blue ship appearing in the corner of the room once again. "Beautiful, yes! Emergency Programme protecting the pilot, of course! Partial materialisation!"

"What's going on?" Luke asked, the other boy running into the room from the outside hall, K9 just behind him.

"Look!" the Doctor said, throwing his arms around Luke and Rani's shoulders as he stared at the ship, now crackling with blue energy. "That's pure Artron Energy! TARDIS power. Strong enough to beat the Trickster's power! That's how we can fight him!"

As the ship began to become ever more solid, the Doctor ran towards it, his key in his hand as he slammed it into the keyhole, opening the door and hurrying into the ship, Clyde just behind him as Rani, Luke and I followed, the Doctor beckoning us all in as we suddenly found ourselves in what felt like a barrage of wind…

Then the door slammed shut behind the Doctor, right into Clyde's face, the young boy left shaking for a moment as the blue energy surrounding the ship spread to envelop him, the energy ceasing only after the ship vanished, leaving me staring in horror at the location where the ship had been.

I couldn't believe it; after everything that I'd been through with the Doctor, I was now left stuck in a hotel that had been taken outside of time itself, with no way to get home and nothing we could use to stop the bastard who'd trapped us here?

This was the most desperate situation I'd ever been in, the Doctor was gone, and I had _no_ idea how to get out of here…


	4. Ending the Deal

"What now?" Rani asked, desperation obvious in her voice as we all took in the Doctor's absence; it actually took me a moment to realise that the younger girl had directed the question to me.

"I- wait, you're asking _me_ what to do?" I said, looking at her incredulously.

"Well, you _do_ travel with him-" she began.

"I've only been with him for a few weeks; that doesn't mean I know more than you about this mess!" I protested, looking indignantly back at Rani; I liked the idea of being more independent with the Doctor than I'd been with the Cullens, but that didn't mean I was ready to have everyone else depending on _me_ to get them out of trouble, and definitely not out of something like _this_!

"We'll… he'll come back for us, won't he?" Clyde said, looking anxiously over at me.

"If he can," I said, taking a deep breath to calm myself down, not wanting to voice the possibility that he wouldn't be able to do so- we already all knew that it was a possibility- as I glanced over at Luke. "You stay here while we check with K9; we need to see if we have any other options."

It wasn't much of a plan, but it was all we had at the moment…

"Hold on…" Clyde said, after we'd run out to the lobby to check on K9, the robot dog still waiting there for the rest of us. "The Doctor said the power of the TARDIS could fight the Trickster; something energy…"

"Artron energy," K9 said in confirmation. "Residue of TARDIS engines; known to be highly inimical to certain time-sensitive life forms."

"Yeah, but we don't _have_ the TARDIS right now-?" I began, before blue energy suddenly crackled around Clyde's hands.

"What's that?" Rani said, looking at Clyde in shock as he stared at his hands.

"Artron energy, Mistress Rani," K9 said.

"And I got a shot of it," Clyde said, looking up at us in realisation; evidently his contact with the TARDIS had done more than just knock him for a temporary loop.

"Then we can fight him," Rani said, her tone reflecting my own eagerness at this turn of events; after being off-guard for so long, we _finally_ had a shot at turning this around…

"No," Clyde said, holding up his still-crackling hand as he looked at us. "I can fight him… I can get close to the Trickster with this."

"What?" I said incredulously; Clyde was talking about fighting a _god_ here…

"Clyde, you can't!" Rani said, a hint of fear in her voice even if anger was the dominant emotion. "You don't know what you're doing!"

"When has that ever stopped us?" Clyde said. "It's what Sarah Jane would do; it's what the Doctor taught her. I've got no choice!"

I wished that I could contradict what Clyde was saying- it just didn't feel right to let someone younger than me go up against a virtual god, even if I hadn't had much experience at dealing with this kind of thing-, but given the situation in front of us, we didn't exactly have a lot of options if we were going to get out of this mess.

"Please don't do this!" Rani said, even as Clyde opened the hotel door onto the white void before us.

"Trickster!" he yelled, the dark-clad figure appearing in the void some distance from us.

"Clyde Langer!" the Trickster replied mockingly. "Why do you call me?"

"I wish to serve you," Clyde said, as he advanced out into the void, quickly reaching the point where Rani, K9, Luke and I could only watch as he advanced towards the Trickster, the entity's black-clad form standing out against the white void more intently than Clyde's grey suit as they approached each other. As we watched, Clyde drew closer to the Trickster until he finally grabbed the entity's hand, creating a sudden surge of blue energy around them as they both screamed in pain, simultaneously causing everything around us to shake as though we were caught in an earthquake.

"What's going on?" Rani said, looking at me in confusion.

"I don't know!" I said, taking a hold of the nearby desk to try and keep myself upright, Rani and Luke grabbing various other objects in the lobby while K9 moved around in circles out of a lack of anything else to do. "I think… I think Clyde's attack is throwing the Trickster off!"

"OK, but does that help _us_?" Luke asked.

I was about to reply that I had no idea when suddenly, everything blurred around me with even greater intensity, as though we were suddenly all being dragged somewhere by a mass of vampires, and suddenly the shaking stopped, leaving no sign of Clyde or the Trickster.

"Oh no…" I said, looking at where Clyde had been standing in horror.

I still didn't know what had just happened, but _that_ couldn't be good…

"Where is he?" Rani said, looking between the three of us. "What just happened?"

"Temporal displacement detected," K9 said, ears wiggling as he looked at us. "Master Clyde and the Trickster have been relocated."

"He's moved in time?" I said, before a new thought occurred to me. "As in… has he moved to Sarah's second?"

"Insufficient data to confirm that statement, Mistress Bella, but probability is likely," K9 said.

"Ah," I said, thinking about that for a moment before I shrugged. "Well, that's something…"

"OK, but even if he's moved to Sarah Jane's second, how does that help us?" Rani said, looking pointedly at me.

I was about to say something in response- what I'd say I wasn't sure, but I was going to try and volunteer _something_ else for us to do-, but the need for me to contribute suggestions became irrelevant when I started to hear voices in the room where the reception was being held at the same time as the TARDIS started to materialise, the Doctor practically bursting out of the ship as it returned to existence.

"He did it!" the Time Lord said, grinning around at us. "Clyde broke through to Sarah's second and the deal's over!"

"How do you know?" I asked.

"Because I'm back!" the Doctor said, before his face fell as he realised something. "Which means…"

Without taking the time to explain, the Doctor opened the doors to the reception area to reveal the woman previously identified as Sarah Jane Smith kneeling on the floor, an unconscious Clyde in her lap, and no sign of the groom she'd been about to marry. For a moment, I wondered what had happened, but then I remembered what Sarah's friends had told me about the Trickster's usual methods of offering people deals and the Doctor's talk about the groom's role in the Trickster's plan.

It might just be a guess, but I had a feeling that the groom had been the subject of a deal with the Trickster that he'd just ended…

"You did it," the Doctor said as he moved to place comforting hands on Sarah's shoulders while the rest of us gathered around her and Clyde, his tone reassuring despite his obvious sympathy. "You did it; the trap's broken. Time's moving forward again; we're going home."

_Home_ …

It was almost strange how quickly I thought of my room in the TARDIS with that statement- the small library I'd accumulated, the clothes I'd picked out from the wardrobe, the desk I used when I wanted to write or look up something in the ship's archives-, but what really struck me as strange was how it _wasn't_ strange to think of that incredible ship as my home; as the world flared up around us, I was eager to see the ship again…

Then the light faded and I was standing in the room with the reception once more, apparently in the same place I'd been in when the Trickster had originally appeared, with all the previously-vanished guests returned to their seats; the only difference between now and when the Trickster had appeared was that the groom and the Doctor were gone.

I barely registered the person who'd been officiating the wedding automatically reciting the line about anyone with just cause about why this wedding shouldn't be allowed before she realised that the groom had vanished, but after Sarah had walked past me, all I could do was slump down into the nearest empty seat towards the back, trying to process what had just happened.

The Doctor had left me behind…

The next hour or so was mostly a blur; with Sarah having left the hotel, it was left to Luke, Clyde and Rani to provide some kind of cover story for the guests- something about Peter having to run off due to a medical issue of some sort; they were apparently trusting that everyone would be so confused that they would be willing to accept even an implausible explanation over the 'impossible' idea that a god-like entity had done it-, but I came back to myself when I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up to see a darker-skinned woman in a brilliant blue dress looking curiously at me.

"Are you all right, sweetheart?" she said, a sympathetic, gentle tone to her voice that made me think briefly of Esme. "Rani told me you're a friend of Sarah Jane's?"

"More like a… friend of a friend, really," I said, awkwardly shrugging at the older woman as I stood up, looking uncertainly at her; from what I'd seen earlier as my three allies explained things to everyone, I was fairly sure this was Rani's mother, but I wasn't going to swear to it as she could just be a close relative. "Actually, could you… take me to her? I just… well, I'm not trying to impose, but I think there's… well, she might need help…"

"After what just happened?" the woman said, looking at me with a warm smile. "Well, I'm sure Sarah Jane wouldn't say no to some more help; I'd offer myself, but really my daughter's closer to her than I am…"

"That'd… be great, thanks," I said, smiling thankfully at the older woman as she led me out to her car, with an older man that I guessed was her husband. To my relief, they seemed to recognise that I didn't want to talk- or at least, the man seemed to recognise I wasn't interested; the woman started out with a brief series of questions before her husband suggested that she give me time to think-, allowing me to sit in silence in the back seat, scanning my surroundings as we drove back to Sarah Jane Smith's house on Bannerman Road. It all seemed so strange to see the subtle differences between this now and my now- I was fairly sure I'd heard a date for the present that was in my personal future if I'd just stayed in Forks, but it was hard to be sure…

I was relieved when the car came to a stop outside a house that the woman identified as Sarah's; at least I didn't have to worry about what to do for the immediate future, or thnking about what the date was. Briefly thanking them for the lift, I walked into the house and headed up to the attic, only to feel suddenly awkward as I saw Sarah Jane sitting in front of a large thing that I assumed was a computer of some sort coming out of one wall, dressed in a turquoise sweater, a long dark coat and jeans as opposed to her earlier dress, with Luke, Clyde and Rani gathered around her; this seemed like a more private thing…

"Bella!" Clyde said, smiling at me as I walked in before his expression fell, clearly remembering that the reasons why I was here weren't exactly positive ones.

"Mmm?" the older woman said, looking up from her silence to take in my presence.

"Hello," I said, looking slightly awkwardly at the Doctor's former companion- it sounded better than 'old' companion, anyway- after exchanging smiles with the others; whatever I'd thought earlier, I was definitely committed to talking to her now. "I'm… I'm Bella Swan; I came here with-"

"With the Doctor," Sarah finished for me, getting up and giving me a brief hug before she stepped back to look at me with a warm smile. "Thank you."

"I didn't do much…" I said, looking awkwardly at her.

"And if we're talking about that, why did he just leave like that?" Luke said, looking curiously at his mother.

"Sudden disappearing acts," Sarah said with a tearful smile as she looked over at her son. "That's him all over."

I was about to ask what she meant by that- was she seriously implying that the Doctor would just _leave_ me like this?-, before another voice spoke, apparently coming from the large computer-like device behind her. "Sarah Jane, escalation of temporal flux."

"Temporal flux escalating," K9 added, apparently not wanting to be outdone by the computer, just as the familiar sound of the TARDIS's materialisation filled the attic. Grinning broadly, I turned to look at the source of the sound as the blue box appeared at last, before the door opened and the Doctor emerged.

"What do you take me for, Sarah?" the Doctor said, his tone very casual. "Just thought I'd take the quick way- oh, I like it in here…"

"You're back…" I said, smiling warmly at the Time Lord as he looked at me, his expression momentarily apologetic before assuming his usual grin.

"Of course I came back," my friend said, grinning reassuringly at me. "Just got sent back to the TARDIS when time snapped back to normal- whole thing with you being more at home where you were than I am for various temporal reasons that can't really be explained in English-, and it took me a while to get the right coordinates-"

I didn't even care about the full explanation as I ran forward to enthusiastically hug the Doctor; all that mattered was that he was back- he _hadn't_ left me behind on purpose-, and I was _home_ again…

"Can we have a look?" Rani asked, the three younger people looking eagerly at the Doctor as I stepped away from him.

"What, in the TARDIS?" the Doctor said, Rani nodding in excitement. " _My_ TARDIS?"

I was briefly concerned at the hostility in the Doctor's voice; had something happened to him…?

"'Course you can, yeah," the Doctor said, his tone returning to normal as he stepped aside to allow the others into the ship.

As I led my three new friends into my new home, I smiled slightly as I watched their awe at what was around us; I might have adjusted to the TARDIS's seemingly impossible interior with experience and time, but that didn't mean I didn't understand why it was so amazing to them now.

"Oh, wow!" Clyde said, staring up at the central console. "It really is, isn't it? It's bigger on the inside."

"It's beautiful!" Rani said, leaning on the seat as she looked at it.

"Transcendental dimensions," Luke said, smiling slightly at her.

"Don't over-analyse, Luke," I said, grinning over at the boy as I leaned against one of the pillars, even taking the opportunity to give it a brief hug when nobody was looking; after nearly losing the ship, I was just glad to be home once again. "Just enjoy it."

"And don't touch anything!" Sarah said as she walked in after the children as Clyde reached out for the console, before looking at the Doctor with a soft smile. "You came all that way… for me?"

"You're so important," the Doctor said nonchalantly, his hands in his pockets as he looked at her. "Not just to me. Trickster wanted to end your story, but it goes on! The things you've done, Sarah, they're pretty impressive, but oh, the things you're going to do…"

"The future…" Luke said, looking curiously at the Doctor. "How about… we could go for a ride?"

"Or back!" Clyde said. "To the dinosaurs, yeah?"

"Or another planet?" Rani asked.

"No way!" Sarah said firmly. "For one thing, you are grounded by the Judoon, and your parents would never forgive me. Go on!"

As the other three left the TARDIS, Sarah looked thoughtfully around the console room before she turned her attention to me.

"So," she said, smiling warmly at me in a manner that put me in mind of a strange combination of Esme and Alice (If I had to define it, it put me in mind of how an aunt might smile at me, if my parents had ever had any siblings). "You're… Bella Swan, right?"

"Yeah," I said, smiling back at her and holding out my hand. "Uh… I know we did this earlier, but… nice to meet you?"

"Good to meet you too," Sarah Jane said, smiling back at me before she looked over at the Doctor curiously. "Where did you meet her?"

"Forks, Washington," the Doctor clarified with a smile. "I was feeling lonely and taking a walk, Bella was in the area and needed to get away from it all for a while…"

He shrugged. "It seemed like a good match."

"And I've enjoyed every minute of it," I said, grinning over at the Doctor (My time in the Dalek mines of Arkheon might not have been exactly fun, but everything else had at least been interesting, even if some things had been more dangerous than others).

"That's good," Sarah said, before she looked uncertainly at the Doctor. "Is this the last time I'm ever going to see you?"

"I don't know," the Doctor said, as he sat on the edge of the console with a thoughtful expression. "I hope not."

"Bye, Doctor," Sarah said, smiling at him with a more hopeful expression. "Until the next time."

She looked over at me. "Take care of him; he sometimes forgets why he needs us."

"I will," I said, feeling the weight of those words even if I didn't get their meaning; what could the Doctor need _me_ for…?

"Don't forget me, Sarah Jane," the Doctor said, as she began to walk towards the door

"No one's ever going to forget you," Sarah said, turning around to smile warmly at the Doctor.

With that, she turned and walked out of the TARDIS, leaving the Doctor to close the doors and set the ship in motion.

"So…" I said, looking awkwardly at the Doctor for a moment before I spoke again. "That was Sarah Jane Smith?"

"Yep," the Doctor confirmed with a grin. "One of my longest-running human companions; the things we saw together…"

"Like what?" I asked, suddenly curious; the Doctor had mentioned some of the alien races he'd encountered most regularly in his travels, but there had to be some he didn't meet that often…

"Well," the Doctor said, as he looked thoughtfully at the console, "just let me set the controls properly, and I'll tell you all about it…"

My contact with Sarah Jane might have been brief, but I already had a feeling that it was going to be _very_ interesting to learn more about her.


End file.
